**Source: PSS vol. 19**

German agricultural censuses, like all European censuses (in contrast to Russian ones) of this kind, are based on information collected about each agricultural enterprise individually. The quantity of information gathered ordinarily increases with each census. For example, in Germany in 1907, very important information about the quantity of livestock used for field work (this information was collected in 1882 and 1895) was omitted, but for the first time information was collected about the quantity of arable land under different grain crops, about the number of family and hired workers. The information obtained in this way about each enterprise is entirely sufficient for a political-economic characterization of that enterprise. The entire question, the entire difficulty of the task consists in how to compile these data in such a way as to obtain an accurate political-economic characterization of various groups or types of enterprises as a whole. With unsatisfactory compilation, with incorrect or insufficient grouping, there can result – and constantly does result in the processing of modern censuses – such an outcome that extraordinarily detailed, magnificent data available about each individual enterprise disappear, are lost, vanish when we speak of millions of enterprises throughout the entire country. The capitalist structure of agriculture is characterized by the relations that exist between proprietors and workers, between enterprises of different types, and if the distinguishing features of these types are taken incorrectly, selected incompletely, then even the best census may fail to provide a political-economic picture of reality.

From this follows the enormous, exceptional importance of the question concerning the methods of compiling or grouping data from modern censuses. In the further exposition we shall examine all the methods, quite varied, employed in the censuses listed above as the best ones. For now, let us note that the German census, like the overwhelming majority of others, provides a complete summary, exclusively grouping enterprises by a single characteristic, namely by the size of the agricultural area of each enterprise. By this characteristic the census divides all enterprises into 18 groups, beginning with those having less than one-tenth of a hectare,[55] and ending with those having more than 1000 hectares of agricultural area. That such detailed subdivision represents a statistical luxury not justified by political-economic considerations is felt by the authors of German statistics themselves, who provide a summary of all the data in six – or with the singling out of one subgroup – seven major groups by agricultural area. These groups are as follows: enterprises having up to 1/2 hectare, from 1/2 to 2, from 2 to 5, from 5 to 20, from 20 to 100, and more than 100, with a subgroup separately distinguished consisting of enterprises having more than 200 hectares of agricultural area.

The question arises: what is the political-economic significance of such a grouping? Land is, undoubtedly, the main means of production in agriculture; by the quantity of land one can therefore most reliably judge the scale of an enterprise, and consequently also its type, that is, for example, whether it is a matter of small, medium, large, capitalist, or non-wage-employing enterprise. Ordinarily, enterprises up to 2 hectares are classified as small (sometimes called parcelled or dwarf) enterprises, from 2 to 20 (sometimes from 2 to 100) as peasant, more than 100 as large, that is, capitalist.

And so, the information first collected by the 1907 census concerning hired labor gives us, first of all, the possibility for the first time to verify on mass data this "ordinary" assumption. For the first time, some – far from sufficient, as we shall see below – element of rationality is introduced into statistical routine, that is, an element of accounting for such data as have the most direct, most immediate political-economic significance.

In fact, everyone talks about small production. But what is small production? The most common answer to this question is that small production is that which does not employ hired labor. This is the view not only of Marxists. For example, Ed. David, whose book "Socialism and Agriculture" might be called one of the newest summaries of bourgeois theories on the agrarian question, writes on page 29 of the Russian translation: "In all those cases where we speak of small production, we mean an economic category functioning without permanent outside help and without side occupations."

The 1907 census thoroughly establishes, first of all, that the number of such enterprises is very small, that in modern agriculture proprietors who do not hire workers, or who do not hire themselves out to others, constitute an insignificant minority. Of the total number of 5,736,082 agricultural enterprises in Germany registered by the 1907 census, only 1,872,616, that is, less than one-third, belong to proprietors whose principal occupation is independent management of agriculture and who have no side occupations. How many of them hire workers? There is no information about this, that is, they existed in the most detailed form in the original cards and were lost in the compilation! The compilers did not wish to calculate (having performed masses of the most detailed and worthless calculations) what number of enterprises in each group hire permanent or temporary hired workers.

To approximately determine the number of enterprises without hired workers, let us single out those groups in which the number of enterprises is less than the number of hired workers. These will be the groups with land quantity up to 10 hectares per enterprise. In these groups there are 1,283,631 proprietors who consider their principal occupation to be agriculture and who have no side occupations. This number of proprietors has altogether 1,400,162 hired workers (if we assume that hired workers are kept only by such proprietors who consider agriculture their principal occupation and have no side occupations). Only in the group of enterprises having from 2 to 5 hectares is the number of independent farmers without side occupations greater than the number of hired workers, namely: 495,439 enterprises and 411,311 hired workers.

Of course, hired workers also exist among those farmers who have side occupations; of course, there are "small" proprietors hiring not one but several hired workers. But still, there cannot be any doubt that proprietors who do not hire workers and do not hire themselves out to work constitute an insignificant minority.

On the basis of data concerning the number of hired workers, three main groups of enterprises in German agriculture immediately stand out:

**I. Proletarian enterprises.** Here should be included groups in which a minority of proprietors considers their principal occupation to be independent management of agriculture – in which the majority are hired workers, etc. For example, enterprises with land quantity up to 1/2 hectare – 2,084,060. Of these, only 97,153 are independent farmers, while 1,287,312 are hired workers (in all branches of the national economy) by their principal occupation. Enterprises with land quantity from 1/2 to 2 hectares – 1,294,449. Of these, only 377,762 are independent farmers, 535,480 hired workers, 277,735 are small manufacturers, artisans, traders, 103,472 are employees and representatives of "various and undefined" occupations. It is clear that both these groups constitute enterprises that are proletarian in their mass character.

**II. Peasant enterprises.** Here we include such as have the main mass being independent farmers, with the number of family workers greater than the number of hired workers. These will be groups having from 2 to 20 hectares of land.

**III. Capitalist enterprises.** Here we include such as have the number of hired workers greater than the number of family workers.

Here are the general data about these three groups: [*See table on p. 330. Ed.*]

This table gives us a picture of the economic structure of modern German agriculture. At the bottom of the pyramid stands an enormous mass, almost 3/5 of the total number of "proletarian" enterprises; at the top an insignificant minority (1/20) of capitalist enterprises. Looking ahead, let us note that this insignificant minority possesses more than half of all the land and all the arable land. In its hands is a fifth of the entire number of workers engaged in agriculture, and more than half of the entire number of hired workers.